The marquee political players in New Jersey – Chris Christie and Cory Booker – showed again this week that they are really peas in a pod, perfect together.

They joined arms to fight for pension and health reform, and again for tenure reform.

Now they are showing they have something else in common: They both play games with the truth when it serves their political interests, and they are both scared of each other.

Start with Booker, the mayor of Newark. Democrats wanted him to run for governor because he is their strongest player by far. But Booker looked at the polls, saw he was down by 16 points, and punted.

He flowered it up by saying it was all for his love of Newark. He could win, he said, but he could not bear to leave the city a full year before his term was up. So much was at stake for the people he loved.

“Let there be no doubt, I will complete my full second term as mayor,” he wrote in an op-ed piece in The Star-Ledger.

Now his people are out collecting signatures so that he can be on the Senate ballot later this year. Let the people of Newark eat cake.

Christie is just as bad. He huffs and puffs about the need to cut spending, and is now spending $12 million to schedule the Senate election for Oct. 16, just three weeks before the regular election on Nov. 5.

Here’s what he said in 2009 when the prospect of a special election came up: “I don’t think any responsible governor at this point would call for a special election that would cost $10 million.”

There is no rationale in holding two separate elections three weeks apart – except that it means Christie won’t have to appear on the same ballot as Booker. He knows Booker will draw Democrats to the booth, and he’s intent on running up his victory margin so he can brag about it when he runs for president in 2016.

My prediction: Both men will get their way, and voters will forget all about this. Call it the soft bigotry of low expectations: We expect them to be self-serving liars, so it doesn’t surprise us when we get proof.